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To Roast Hare

Roasted hare stuffed with liver, anchovy, bacon, suet, herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, onion, breadcrumbs, basted with milk and butter, served with currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Roast Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the hare dry and remove the heart and liver.

  2. Soak the hare in water for 1–2 hours.

  3. If using, soak in vinegar, then wash thoroughly in water.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the hare with the prepared stuffing and sew it up.

  2. Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially.

  3. Baste with milk until half-cooked, then switch to butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy, melted butter, and currant jelly sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Lean meat that forms the main body of the dish and firms as it cooks.
Old lard (or fat)
Fat that keeps the lean meat moist and carries heat during roasting.
Milk for basting
Milk solids brown on the surface, giving the roast a golden, slightly sweet crust.
Butter for basting
Adds richness and golden colour to the outside, with a rounder flavour, once basting switches to it.

The step that matters

Keep the hare at a distance from the fire initially. Hare is very lean and dries out easily. Gentler heat at first lets the interior cook through evenly before the surface browns, which helps avoid a tough, scorched outside.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, milk, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, liver, anchovy, pepper, onion, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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